


Live Within You

by kitsunealyc



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, Meta-narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 12:50:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunealyc/pseuds/kitsunealyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many have explored the Labyrinth, but not even its King understands all its secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Live Within You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anticyclone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclone/gifts).



**_The Lady_ **

~~~  
 _Ariadne was the first, and for her he made an entire world encased in stone and capped by empty sky. He made a great, horned beast to terrorize the place and a knight to adore her. He made a skein to guide her path and he played the King who terrorized her into finding her freedom. The story became Theseus', but the Labyrinth, that had always belonged to Ariadne._

_Peter wished himself away. He was an odd lad. He let the clock run out, preferring to become a goblin rather than return to the world. He is there still, in a pocket of the Labyrinth that will never, never be disturbed. The King still dons hat and hook and visits sometimes to play pirate._

_Alice had been a dreamchild too sly for his tricks. He had nothing she wanted, and so she slipped easily away. Yet she was also the only one ever to return, and that made her his favorite for almost a century._

_Until Sarah Williams._

~~~  
Sarah slams the door behind her and chucks her purse on the little table masquerading as a credenza in her cramped foyer. "FUCK!"

The table rocks. The mirror above it shifts crooked on its hook. Not nearly as dramatic an effect as she hoped to cause. She throws her keys at the mirror, misses, and puts a chip in the wall that matches all the other chips in the wall.

"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!" She beats the wall on either side of the mirror, screaming at the red-faced woman within. Her make-up is smeared from her drive home from the therapist -- ex-therapist. Her dark hair is left tangled from raking her fingers through it, digging her nails into her scalp, holding her head so that the rage inside her won't explode until she is home and can scream it out within the safety of four walls.

"I wish you'd never been born. I wish you'd never grown up." She pounds her fists on the wall. Plaster flakes down from the impact, not because of the strength of her blows, but because the plaster is that old and that cheap.

"I wish you'd learned you can't trust anyone. I wish you hadn't wasted away half your life on pointless dreaming."

Dreams. Her therapist had asked her about them today, and because she was trying not to withhold this time, she'd told him that she didn't dream. He'd stopped scribbling notes. He'd listened very intently. Eventually, she'd tried to laugh and brush it off as nonsense. Of course she dreamed. Everyone dreamed. She just didn't remember hers, but the damage had already been done. He'd seen the truth at the center of her. The hollowness that used to be filled by something magic, an entire world of magic. The hollowness that she'd carried for a very, very long time.

"I hate you," she screams at her reflection, that pinch-faced, hollow-eyed woman she has become. "I HATE YOU!"

Hate. So much hate. It is the only thing she can feel these days, when she manages to feel anything at all. The hate fills an abscess that has been growing inside her all her adult life, an abscess exacerbated by loved-ones leaving and unanswered questions, by not-quite-good-enoughs and almost-made-its. The hatred is all the purer for not being tainted by self-pity or sorrow, by doubt or grief. She hates that woman in the mirror with a hate more pure than any hate she has ever felt for another person.

"I hate you," she hisses.

Everything pure is imbued with a form of magic. Unicorns know this, and lovers. Sarah Williams does not.

"I wish..." She sniffles and smears her make-up more, smears the snot streaming from her nose, the salt tears coursing down her puffy cheeks. "I wish the goblins would come and take _you_ away. Right now."

~~~  
 ** _The Lord_**

_It is said that the life of a King is a lonely one, but that is something of a lie. He is not alone. He has his goblins, and the others who have fallen into in his realm and stayed. He has the Labyrinth itself, more a part of him than his body. And he has colleagues, others like him who do similar things in different ways: Parnassus, Munchausen, Mephistopheles, The Genie._

_But it is also very true. He is alone, because there is only one Labyrinth, and only one Goblin King._

~~~  
Sarah's endless tumble ends at a pair of black boots. Her head aches, her bones ache, and her body feels twisted and wrong. She groans and rises to her knees, brushing dust and grit from her clothes.

"What have we here? A new subject for the court? And kneeling properly. That's a first."

A hand helps her rise, and then catches her chin to lift it. Parti-colored eyes swim into view, blue and green, set in a face cruel and beautiful, framed by dandelion hair. His grin is mocking-merry. It widens at her squeak of recognition. "Hello, Sarah."

Her bubble of confusion bursts into chaos. Jareth, the Goblin King, sits on a siege of weeping grey stone. The vaulted, circular throne room is filled with his subjects. They cackle, and pick their noses, and get into squabbles that quickly erupt into violence. Chickens strut around, uncaged and unchallenged. Light catches on their feathers floating in the air.

Sarah sneezes. Jareth purses his lips.

"Quiet," he murmurs, and then, when that elicits no response save more chaos, "QUIET!" in a voice loud enough to make the ceiling tremble. Dust sifts down to dance with the chicken feathers. Sarah sneezes again. The goblins still. The chickens don't.

"Shall we take a walk, you and I?" Jareth asks, and leads her out to the castle ramparts before she can refuse.

The wind blowing up from the Labyrinth is bracing. It helps Sarah collect her scattered thoughts. She had done this. She wished herself away. At least there's nobody else to pay for her sins this time. But she can't stay. Of course she can't stay, even though that hollow place inside her is filled with something other than hate for the first time in her memory. Confusion, yes, and fear, but also a lurking lightness that she suspects might be hope.

But she can't stay. In thirteen hours, she'll be a goblin. She knows his rules.

"It'll be a piece of cake to find the center of the Labyrinth if I get to start from here," she says. Her voice sounds odd to her ears, high and nasal.

"Will it?" The Goblin King stands behind her, watching her watch his realm. Her shoulders itch under the weight of his gaze. "And why would you even seek it out?"

"To escape. To keep from becoming a goblin."

Jareth's laugh batters at her bravado. He takes her shoulders and turns her to face him. He's taller than she remembers. She blinks. This can't be right.

"Sarah. Look at yourself. You used up all your time on your last visit. You were a goblin the moment you landed here. There's no fight to fight this time. I've already won."

She shakes her head, but she can see herself reflected in his eyes -- black beetled brows always too thick have grown and joined like a single, fuzzy caterpillar perched over her eyes. Her face is puffy and squinched all at once, green at the edges and red in the center like some withered boutique apple. Her nose is a reddened berry, her lips too thin and too wide.

Her hands fly to her cheeks, and they are just as wrong -- spindly fingers on thin, bony arms. Her gut rounds out like a garlic bulb under the thin material of her blouse, and her trousers swish like skirts around rawboned goblin legs.

"What... what did you do?" she whispers.

"You give me too much credit," Jareth drawls. "You did this yourself.

"Well, you're the Goblin King. _Undo_ it," she shrieks, swatting at his chest.

He catches her hands and rises to his feet. She hadn't even realized he was crouching. Now he looms over her like a god. Her head barely tops his waist. But she can still see his smirk, curving above her like a crescent moon. "What's said is said, and can't be unsaid. As king, I am very happy to welcome you to my court. Mind the chickens. They peck."

She stomps. She fumes. She tears her hands from his grasp and folds her thin arms. She beetles her thick, black goblin brow at him and sneers her bulbous goblin nose. But she doesn't say the words that spring to her mind: _It's not fair!_

Of course it isn't fair. _Life_ isn't fair. He taught her that, and life has reinforced the truth of it time and again.

"Screw you, then." She spits at his feet. Her goblin voice is high and nasal. Jareth's lips twitch. If he cracks a full smile, she is going for his unprotected bits, king or not. "I'll solve your stupid Labyrinth anyways, with or without a clock."

Sarah stomps off on spindly goblin legs. Jareth's laughter follows her along the ramparts. Maybe she won't do things his way this time. Maybe she'll gather a goblin army and depose his condescending ass.

"We'll see who's laughing when the clock strikes thirteen," she mutters. She promptly slips on a sparkly goblin turd and tumbles over the edge of the ramparts into the moat far below.

~~~  
 ** _The Knight_**

_There is a code. There has always been a code. The code shaped him and guided him into what he is. Don Quixote spake it best: to fight the unbeatable foe, to love pure and chaste from afar. Others have fallen, have strayed, have broken with the code and lost honor, but never he. Each scar he earns, each tuft of hair lost in battle for a cause greater than himself, is another pledge he makes. Blood seals it. Honor upholds it._

_And the world will be better for this._

~~~  
"Hold, Villain!" Sarah hears when she bobs to the surface of the moat after her plummet and splash. "Stand fast where thou art and answer for thy crimes!"

"Help!" she sputters, clawing at the water. Her round little goblin body seems to float just fine, but her spindly goblin limbs are useless for swimming. She bobs on the ripples of her own fall, like a floater on a fishing line, but all she can manage with her thrashing is to make more splashes. "Help!"

"This moat is for fishing only. Swimming, wading, surfing, paddling, canoodling, and all other water sports are strictly forbidden. I demand you cease your splashing at once, lest you make things even worse for yourself."

That voice. She knows that voice. "Sir Didymus!" She catches the stem of a water lily and uses that to steady herself and turn about.

"Picking the flowers is also forbidden. I must give you fair warning that if you continue, I will be forced to strike you down."

"Sir Didymus! It's me. Don't you recognize me?" She knows him at once. He is a bit more scruffy and dashing than he had been. He has eschewed his red and gold doublet for a flowing shirt cinched by a green-tooled leather cuirass and vambraces. Something has bitten a chunk from his ear, and Ambrosius is decked out in proper barding, but he is still the same foxy fellow she met so long ago. How could she have forgotten him? _If you should need us,_ but the older she grew, the less ofen she had called. She'd forgotten how. "Don't you know me?"

"You, sir, are a goblin, and a villain, and a knave, and I will fight you anytime, anywhere, on land, on sea--"

"In a house, with a mouse," she mutters. Something nips at her toes. She pulls her feet up with a squeak, fearing that lilies are the nicest things living in the Goblin King's moat.

"If need be, yea and verily!"

"Sir Didymus, it's me. Sarah. I came back, but the king turned me into a goblin."

"My lady?" Didymus nudges Ambrosius closer to the shore, peering at her with his one good eye. "Impossible. You are a goblin, and a knave." But the certainty is gone from his voice.

"Didymus, please. Just let me come to shore, and I'll prove it." Something nips at her toes again. She yelps and clings to her lily pad.

"I am sorry, My L-- kna-- er... My Gobley, but my charge is quite clear. There is no swimming of any sort allowed in the moat. If you disobey, then I will be forced to strike you down. I have sworn an oath."

Of course he had. Sarah closes her eyes. Something bangs against her ass in passing. "But fishing is allowed?"

Didymus' brows rise. "Of course. It is a moat."

"So if you grab the branch over there and fish me out, it wouldn't be breaking your word?"

"Well... but... goblins. Can one fish for...? That is... I suppose... there's nothing..."

Sarah waits impatiently for Didymus' thoughts to arrive at the conclusion she handed him. Whatever lurks beneath her is getting bolder.

"Er... I suppose that is... no?"

"Then get that branch and fish me out of here!"

"At once, my lady!" Didymus fetches the branch and hauls Sarah ashore just as something made of mud and moss and eyes and teeth rises from the water and tries to chomp off her feet.

Sarah rolls on the shore, dripping wet and stinking of moat. "At least it wasn't the Bog of Eternal Stench," she mutters. She sits up, almost knocking her head on Didymus' chin. He is hovering over her, mustachios drooping with concern. "Wait. You called me 'my lady.' You recognize me?

She touches her face, but her features still feel puffy, her skin rough and rubbery. Still a goblin.

"Of course, my lady. Your wisdom shines through whatever guise you wear."

Wisdom. She has to laugh. Only Didymus would think her wise. She struggles to her feet with a series of huffs and sour grumbles. Didymus helps her pick off the worst of the moat slime.

"But why have you returned, my lady, after so long away? And why has the king cursed you so?"

Sarah frowns. How can she explain to Didymus what she doesn't understand herself -- that it isn't Jareth who has made her thus?

"It's a long story. Sir Didymus." She lays a spindly-fingered hand on his shoulder. They are of a height now. "Are you still my knight, loyal and true?"

Didymus kneels and places a paw over his breast. "Always, my lady."

"And will you fight for my honor, even against the Goblin King himself?"

Didymus' mustachios twitch. Not fear. Excitement. Like a dog catching the scent of adventure. "My weapon is yours, my steed is yours, my lady. Your enemies are mine."

"Then catch up your weapon and call your steed, Sir knight, for I need your aid to raise an army to depose a king."

~~~

**_The Beast_ **

_There is beauty in strength, in flexed muscles, shining fur, white tusks, black gums, and curved horns._

_He was the first inhabitant of the Labyrinth, as old as the stones that make it up._

_They have weathered much together, he and the stones, felt the passage of time and the caress of many maidens. They are formed of the same stuff. Brothers. Stones also appreciate the beauty in strength._

_That is why they are friends._

~~~  
Sarah hears Ludo's roars and spots goblins sailing overhead as they approach the courtyard where Sir Didymus says they'll find the beast.

"They're attacking him again?" She leaps from where she's been riding postilion behind Didymus and charges around the high hedge.

"Wait! My lady! Ambrosius, come about. No! Get away from that bush. Now is not the time to be... doing _that!_ My lady, wait!"

Sarah ignores him. Ludo hulks in the center of the courtyard, goblins hanging from his fur and circling him in a great, shouting mob.

"Get away from him!" She kicks one goblin in the shin, pulls another's helmet down around his ears. He stumbles blindly into some of his fellows, setting off a chain-reaction of squabbling chaos that allows her to push closer to Ludo. The great beast plucks a goblin from his back, whips it around his head once, twice, thrice, and casts it in a soaring arc over the wall.

A great roar rises from the mass of goblins. Ludo's attack only seems to enrage them, the ones that aren't distracted fighting each other, at least. Sarah picks out incomprehensible calls from the shouting: _Me next!_ and _You had a go already!_ and _Harder!_ _Further!_ _Faster!_

Goblins have never made much sense to her.

"You leave him alone!" She grabs the ankles of one goblin hanging off Ludo -- just as the great beast plucks the goblin from his back.

The goblin bares his teeth at her. "Hey! Leggo mah leg!" He kicks at her face. "You're gonna cause drag!"

"Why are you doing this? What _are_ you doing?"

"Goblin flinging! It's fun!" screams the goblin as Ludo lifts them high. "He's the best. Yeeha!"

Sarah screams when Ludo spins them, realizing she is about to go sailing along with the other goblin. "Ludo! No, wait!"

Ludo spins, gaining force. Her grip on the goblin's ankles is slipping. She might not even make it three rotations.

"Sir Ludo! Cease thy flinging!" Sarah spots a russet blur that might be Didymus, darting between Ludo's legs to whack at one foot with his stick. The great beast pays him no mind.

"Ludo, noooooo!" At the perihelion of the final arc, something catches Sarah's leg and she loses her grip, but instead of flying in a sailing arc like the other goblin, she swings down and bounces against something soft enough to cushion her fall, but hard enough to knock her breath away. A gust of hot, wet air that smells of alfalfa blows her hair back.

Tusks. She sees tusks, yellow with age, thrusting from a gaping maw. Ludo shakes his head, and she bounces across her nose, dangling from the trouser leg that has hooked one of his horns.

"Goblin no fly?" Ludo rumbles, and once again, Sarah is assailed by the scent of alfalfa. She wipes spit from her face.

"No. I mean, no, I don't want to fly, and no, I'm not really a goblin. Ludo, it's me. Sarah-friend. Do you remember me?" Her voice grows small and unsure. Ludo is kind, but he makes Didymus look like a Rhodes Scholar. Why would he remember her?

"Sarah?"

Maybe they can start over. Sarah pats his cheek awkwardly. Her head is starting to pound from hanging upside down. "Friend."

Ludo sniffs once. Twice, and then Sarah is treated to another view of his gaping maw. She screams, and somewhere she can hear Didymus barking.

"Don't eat me! Don't eat me!"

But Ludo plucks her free of his horn and sets her down on the courtyard stones. "Ludo no eat. Sarah friend." The beast thrusts his face close until all she can see is his friendly grin, his kind eyes, and his floppy ears.

She blinks back tears. "You know me?

Ludo nods. His ears flop some more. Sarah throws her arms around him and lets his fur soak her tears. His great paw settles against her back, engulfing her in warmth and safety. It is a sort of acceptance she hasn't felt in a very long time.  
~~~

**_The Gatekeeper_ **

_The first challenge of the Labyrinth is finding it. Most dreamers only come by invitation, though most don't realize their blundering was so carefully orchestrated as to seem accidental._

_The second challenge of the Labyrinth is to breech the walls. When too many dreamers gave up, finding the perimeter too daunting to assail, and wandered away before they'd even truly arrived, the King decided it was time to appoint a guide, someone to give them a friendly nudge in the right direction._

_It is rather apparent, given who he set to the task, that the King has an odd interpretation of the term 'friendly.'_

~~~  
"He ain't going." The fairy hovers right above Sarah's nose, her wings buzzing like a tiny, gossamer storm. She's so close that Sarah has to cross her eyes to see her properly. The fairy's thistledown hair is gathered up in a messy bun. She wears a frilly little apron over her nakedness, and a cheap plastic-beaded bracelet crossways over her chest like a bandolier.

Sarah knows that bracelet. It's the only thing that keeps her from swatting the fairy away. Nasty little things. She doesn't want to get bit on the nose.

"Where's Hoggle?"

"Inside." The fairy waves a graceful hand at the gatehouse guarding the walls of the Labyrinth. It's barely big enough to house one person standing, but it must be huge by fairy reckoning. "With the children. Where he is staying. I heard all about your rabble-rousing, and we ain't having none of it. We have a good home under Jareth, and tolls from anyone seeking entry. What're _you_ gonna offer us that's better'n that?"

Children? Sarah glances aside at Ludo, who shrugs, and at Didymus, who is distracted scolding Ambrosius.

"Hoggle?" She pushes past the fairy and storms up to the gatehouse. The door winces at her approach and cringes open before she can pound on it.

Hoggle is seated in a faded armchair, three miniature versions of himself dandling on his knee. Very miniature. They stand perhaps a hand high, and each of them sports a gossamer set of wings. They buzz up at her entrance and hide in the gatehouse rafters.

"Hoggle!"

"Er. Hello, Sarah. Long time no see. See you've met the missus." Hoggle ducks his head and examines his pipe as if it's the most interesting thing in the world.

The missus? Sarah glances at the fairy, who has followed her with an angry buzz of wings. So, she really was... and those really were... "But... but you _hate_ faeries."

"Well, maybe I just hadn't met the right one yet."

"And you gave her my bracelet?

The fairy squeaks and bustles past Sarah, flying up to the rafters to shush and soothe her homely children. Just like a mother. She gives Sarah a cold-eyed glare over her shoulder. Just like a jealous wife.

"Course I did." Hoggle raises his chin and puffs out his chest. "Pure plastic. Finest there is. She wouldn't have me for anything less."

"I... I..." Sarah looks around the rest of the gatehouse. It's really rather cozy. More cheap baubles hang on the walls, and Hoggle's clothes are mended and clean. His hair is kempt. He looks... happy.

"Congratulations, Hoggle," Sarah says, subdued. "She's a lucky girl." Sarah's glance darts back up to the fairy, who _hmphs_ and turns her back, but looks less like she might bite Sarah.

"Yes. Well. We have it good here." He still isn't meeting her eyes.

Sara drags a stool over to him and sits down before the face carved into the top can protest. "Hoggle--"

"I know what you're going to ask, Sarah, and I can't. It was one thing, helping you get your brother, but you're talking about deposing Jareth. That's what folk are saying. I just... I can't. I got family now."

"I understand, Hoggle." Sarah chokes back tears and pats his knee. "I won't ask you to come with me, but if you have any advice? You're smarter than anyone else here, and you know him."

"Well. Well." Hoggle blushes at the flattery. He looks left, right, up, and down, before leaning in close. Sarah leans in to meet him until their noses are almost bumping. "You didn't hear it from me, but if you want a weapon to fight Jareth, the best place to find it is the Goblin Market."

"The Goblin Market?"

"Hsh!" Hoggle raises a stubby finger alongside his nose. "Just remember the last time I gave you something. And you didn't hear it from me."

Sarah smiles softly. It isn't as good as having him at her side, but at least he isn't shunning her. She leans back. "Hear what?"

Hoggle is still leaning close. He searches her face. "Sarah. Why do you even _want_ to take Jareth's place?"

Sarah studies the hole left in her trousers by Ludo's horn. Damn Hoggle for asking questions she doesn't have the answer to. It had started as defiance, but now she is being carried by momentum. "He isn't giving me any other choice. It's either take his place, or stay a goblin."

"You could leave." Hoggle waves at the door. "Go home. Wake up. Jareth isn't holding you here."

Go home, where she is something much worse than a goblin -- small-minded, petty, hateful.

Empty.

She shakes her head. "I can't. I can't go back to that. I'd rather stay a goblin."

"Is it really so bad, Sarah?"

She stands and hugs him before he can see the tears welling up. "Not all of us can be as lucky as you, Hoggle." Her voice is rough. She clears her throat and backs away. "I promise, if I succeed, nothing will change. I'll even give you a raise." She addresses the last bit to the rafters and gets a squeaky _hmph_ for her pains.

"Goodbye, Hoggle. It was... I'm glad I got to see you again."

"Be safe, Sarah." Hoggle says. He hesitates for a moment at the doorway of the gatehouse, as though he might follow her out, but when Sarah re-enters the Labyrinth, only Ludo, Sir Didymus, and Ambrosius are with her.

~~~

**_The Forbidden Fruit_ **

_It has taken many forms over the years, but it is always the same inside. The taste is always sweeter than can be imagined, and more bitter than disillusionment. The worm Ouroboros dwells at its heart in place of a seed, and nobody who eats of it walks away unchanged._

_Change is the point of a catalyst._

~~~  
The Goblin Market is a cacophony of scents, sights, and hawkers cries.

"Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices! Juiciest fruit in the market, or your chickens back! First sample's free! Come buy, come buy!" screams one apple-faced goblin lady wearing a cherry-striped frock and a permanent leer. She thrusts a basket of peaches under Sarah's nose. The air is thick with their honey-scent. Sarah shoves the basked aside before she can be tempted.

The old goblin lady laughs. "Hah! Guess you've already tasted _that_ fruit, haven't you, dearie? Old Nell can always tell, that's what they say. You know what else they say? Second bite cures you of the first."

"I'm fine. Really. Thanks." Now that she is here, Sarah realizes she has no idea what Hoggle expected her to do. Find a weapon to fight Jareth? She can't imagine striking at him with anything but words. And how is she supposed to gather an army? She isn't a tall, willowy girl anymore, drawing the curiosity and friendship of everyone she meets in the Labyrinth. She's just a goblin. A tall goblin, but still half her old height. Completely banal. Completely overlookable.

Except, apparently, by every goblin merchant looking out for an easy mark. She quickly loses Didymus in the crowd, and even Ludo's looming bulk is obscured by stalls draped in dyed canvas. The market seems more reminiscent of a circus or a carnival. She passes games and oddities, a stall selling only spoons, and another selling screams. She ducks behind a mushroom seller's stall to avoid a fishmonger whose marketing strategy seems to consist of slapping every would-be customer with his wares. She scurries along when she receives glares for being where she shouldn't be. The line of stalls spits her out into an empty clearing rimmed by seven green-veined marble columns.

Well, empty but for one person.

"You seem to be settling into your new life quite nicely." Jareth pushes away from a stone column. He is dressed down, as much as she has ever seen the Goblin King dress down -- wide-collared coat of oxblood leather, dove pantaloons, high boots and a fine lawn shirt. And gloves. Always gloves, as if he's too good to touch the world with his bare hands.

Sarah wants to rip those gloves off his hands and beat him with them. She settles for shoving her own grubby hands in her pockets and meeting him sneer for sneer. "What do you want?"

"Why, only to see how my newest subject is faring." Jareth stops before her. "I am a conscientious king, after all."

Sarah spares a moment of thanks that she is tall for a goblin. It means she can lock her gaze on the buttons of his waistcoat rather than... lower. "You aren't my king."

"Hm. Yes. Your plan to depose me. And how is that coming along?" He clicks his tongue. "Sarah, Sarah. I've ruled over goblins for an age and an age. You know what's easier to herd than them?" He crouches to one knee so they meet eye-to-eye. "Cats."

"Well then, I guess my coup is going to be that much more of a surprise when it comes." Her fists clench and unclench. Her fury simmers closer to boiling point. He wouldn't be so annoying if he wasn't so _right_.

Jareth sighs and touches her cheek with one soft, gloved finger. "Give up, Sarah. You can be happy here, with your friends. And I can be generous, remember?"

Oh, she remembers his idea of generosity. "Give up. Like I did before?" she snaps. "Oh, wait. I didn't. And I won."

"Before, you were a young girl. A heroine in a fairy tale. What are you now?" He flicks her bulbous nose. "Just another goblin."

She launches at him with a shriek of rage, bowling him back into the moss. "I am _not_ just another goblin!" she shouts, shaking him by the lapels, and then, because for all her rage she has never been a violent person, she does the only other thing she can think of to prove her words.

She kisses him.

The world stills around them as though trapped in a bubble, and then the bubble pops, and she's kissing the Goblin King, and he's _kissing her back!_ and it's wrong, all wrong, because he's right. She isn't a beautiful young girl in a pretty frock with silver and ribbons twisted through her wild, dark hair. She's a goblin -- bulbous nose, caterpillar brow, tubby belly, saggy tits.

So she does what any self-respecting goblin would do when being kissed by her king. She bites him, and kicks him in the gut for good measure.

"Well, I should have expected that." Jareth sits up, composed as if she hadn't interrupted his string of taunts by kissing him, as if she isn't straddling him still, face growing hot with embarrassment. His lower lip is crimson. He passes a gloved hand across it. Blood streaks along the pale cream kid. He closes his hand, passes the other hand over it like a magician, and when he opens them again, his gloved palm is filled with pomegranate seeds.

"Care to try that again?" he asks, lifting one dark-winged brow.

It's not a peach this time, and Sarah can't even lie to herself, because it's not her trusted Hoggle making the offer. It is Jareth, and she knows full well the promise held in his palm is just another illusion.

She takes one seed and brings it to her lips.

~~~

**_The Castle_ **

_For as long as there has been a Labyrinth, there has been a center, and for as long as there has been a center, there has been a castle. It is built of the same stone, the same magic, the same dreams as the rest of the Goblin King's realm, and the inside is an echo of the outside. The castle itself is just another Labyrinth._

_Nobody who has explored it has ever found the center of the castle, but of course it must be there. Every Labyrinth has a center, or else what is the point?_

_When asked what lies there, the Goblin King smiles. If he knows, he is not telling._

~~~  
The ball has long since ended, and the princess wanders the empty halls of the castle, trying to find her carriage. She must have one. How else would she have gotten here?

Her heels click loudly on the chessboard marble floors. She pauses at the base of the grand stairway to remove her shoes. She has already abandoned her bothersome mass of petticoats. Her gown of moonlight and dewdrops lies flat against her legs, swishing and catching between them with each step, like a lover's teasing caress.

The poofed mass of her hair has fallen flat as well, victim to the heat of the ballroom and the exertion of dancing. It snakes down her back and sticks to her brow like ribbons of ink.

She leaves her slippers on the steps where she removed them and pads on bare feet through empty, darkened halls. No sense in keeping even one of them. No prince could possibly find her if she can't even find herself.

"Are you lost?" The voice carries down the corridor, bouncing back at her in a double-dozen fragmented echoes. The timber is drawling, almost sing-song, as if to say _My, my, how careless of you._

A figure steps from the shadows of a balcony, finding the beam of moonlight streaming in like an actor finding a spot. The moon limns the dandelion softness of his hair and catches the sapphire brilliants sprayed over the shoulders and collars of his velvet coat like a spatter of raindrops. His polished black boots are up to the thigh, and his grin is a slice of the new moon. Now it is she who stands in shadow, a limp and tangled thing.

"I'm trying to find my way." She knows better than to ask this mocking man for help.

"And which way is that?" He takes a crystal orb from his coat, idly flipping it over and under his hand, over and under, over and under. He rolls it to his other hand and continues the hypnotic game. She can't look away. Over and under. The crystal casts her reflection back at her, but she is reversed, flipped on her head. She stumbles from vertigo, unable to sort which way is up.

The man catches her. She glances over her shoulder so she won't have to meet his eyes. The corridor branches in eight directions, a chaos star of choices.

"I don't know," she whispers.

"If you don't know your way, then isn't it wiser to stay where you are?" He sets her on her feet and circles around her.

She turns to keep him in sight. He changes direction, and now they're dancing, a slow spin without touching, without music.

"No. No, that's not..." She shakes her head, not sure what is or isn't. "I have to find... something."

"Oh, I'm terribly clever at finding things." His grin is feral. He raises gloved hands to his eyes, but she can still see them glittering blue and green between his fingers. "You hide. I'll count. One. Two..."

She darts away, lifting the skirts that would catch between her thighs if she left them loose. Thirteen. She has to thirteen.

The corridors are strewn with leaves edged silver with frost. Dew-soaked cobwebs trail from every window like draperies, fluttering as she runs past. If she can find the center, she will be safe. Home base. Olly-olly oxen free.

"Three. Four."

She rattles doorknobs. They wake and inform her with sleepy indignation that they are _locked,_ thank you very much, as any self-respecting door _would_ be at this time of night, and if she's seeking doors of _that_ sort, perhaps she had better try down in the servants' quarters or the mews.

She runs on.

"Five. Six."

She comes to an empty corridor, blank of doors, save one at the end, standing wide open and welcoming. It isn't the center, but it will do for hiding. She darts down the corridor, leaps through the doorway, and into the arms of the counting man.

"Seven. My luck." She struggles. He holds her.

"You cheated!" The room beyond is a bedroom, she can see that over his shoulder: canopied bed, wardrobe and mirrored vanity. But mostly what she sees is him, a looming thunderstorm with skin pale as lightning. _His flashing eyes, his floating hair,_ she thinks, and can't recall why it's important.

"And you played fair," he says. "You could have stood where you were and been safe."

Her brow is damp again with sweat, hair sticking to it. He pushes back the damp strands, and his hand is as cool as water. Cold hands. What did they say about cold hands?

"But that's not how the game is played." Her fingers sink into the velvet covering his shoulders.

"And who makes the rules?" His breath on her face is as cool as his hands, as sweet as mint.

"The king makes the rules." Being in his arms is like dancing in the rain. She closes her eyes and lifts her chin. She wants to feel his kiss on her cheeks, wants to catch him on her tongue.

"Then what a pity you aren't the king," he murmurs. He kisses her, and she drowns in him.

~~~

**_Falling_ **

_At the heart of the Labyrinth lies the Castle. At the heart of the Castle sits the King. And the heart of the King is the Labyrinth. All Creation is a wormhole looping back on itself, a fall that is always beginning, and always ending._

~~~  
Somewhere, a clock is striking. That is what wakes Sarah, but when she opens her eyes, the sound fades. A dream, then. All she hears on waking is crickets and creaks, and the sound of someone beside her, breathing softly.

She stares up at the canopy above her, night-dark organza strewn with diamantes, like stars. She doesn't want to turn her head, doesn't want to acknowledge the source of the aches through her body, or the memory of pleasure that remains more persistent than the dream-clock.

And yet, she also wants to see. To confirm her dream. She rolls to her side.

The Goblin King's hair is as silver-pale as the sheets he lies on. His skin is paler still, even in the shadow of the canopy. His features are just as sharp in repose as they are waking, and somehow more terrifying for being at rest.

 _I'm allowed to look,_ she tells herself, yet she doubts. She slinks back to the edge of the bed, prey wary of waking a predator, and slips out from under the covers.

Her inexplicable fear dissipates once she's free of the sheets. She wanders the chamber, touching a carving of a face on the back of a chair, a cushion soft as velvet that proves to be alive. It uncurls with a series of soft huffs and trundles off on gold tassel legs.

She stops before a vanity, the mirror edged with rough crystals that sleepily wink open and closed, casing her reflection in flickers of amethyst, cobalt, and pale rose quartz.

She studies herself. Her reflection. No longer a goblin, she stands tall. Her naked breasts might not be as high as they once were, her face not as soft and round, her belly not as flat, her eyes not as wide and dewy, but there is something here, something the girl never had. Allure? Wisdom? She can't quantify what she sees, but she also can't deny it.

A bare hand touches her shoulder. A face appears behind her. "Come back to bed." He sets a crystal orb on her shoulder. It rolls down the rise of her breast. He catches it before it falls to the floor.

"This mirror..." Sarah can't tear her gaze away from their paired reflection. His parti-colored eyes meet hers through the glass.

"Do you like what you see?" His lips are set beside her ear. The shell captures his whispered words. They send a shiver through her. Her nipples pucker, her cunt aches with wetness. This is impossible. He's magic far beyond her reach or understanding. He can't possibly want _her._ The confidence she felt moments before drains away, leaving an aching hollow in its wake.

Her vision grows liquid. She blinks. Tears fall. "It's a lie," she whispers, staring at him through the mirror. She has seen that look twice in her life. Once, when she ran from a ball, and once when she took her brother back.

"No, Sarah," he whispers. "Don't."

She snatches the crystal from his hand and throws it at the mirror. "It's all a lie!"

The world shatters. As she falls through the broken shards, she catches sight of herself as she truly is -- pinched face, hollow eyes, saggy breasts, and bulbous gut -- a goblin once more.

~~~  
 ** _The Coup_**

_Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Yeats was another dreamer wandering the Labyrinth. So was Rossetti, and Coleridge, and every person who ever put pen to paper and changed the world with words._

~~~  
She finds the king in his throne room, in the castle beyond the goblin city.

"So this is the moment where you give me pretty speeches. 'Give me the child' and such?" The Goblin King sweeps his scepter over an empty throne room. "But there is no child, as you can see. Nothing to demand from me. I have no power over you, remember?"

Sarah sidesteps a chicken as she enters the room. He is so grand, so intimidating. She can barely bring herself to look at him, even now. Yet he surrounds himself with silliness and whimsy.

What does that make her? "You took something from me."

He sits upright on his throne, his boots hitting the floor. The leather is pale as bone. He is garbed in bone and cobwebs. A mummified mouse head is tangled up in the tattered folds of his cloak, staring at her with hollowed orbits. Tiny bird bones rattle and tick with his every movement. "I took nothing you did not freely give."

Sarah's face heats, and she can't quite meet his eyes. The last time she'd dreamed with him, the memories had faded afterwards, like an old photograph she couldn't recall taking. This time, she remembers each touch and whisper and caress as though she is feeling it again the moment she thinks of it.

"I meant... before..."

Jareth leans forward, smile feral. "And I did not?" He lifts her chin with his orb-tipped scepter. "Where is your army, Sarah? How do you expect to topple me alone?"

She resists licking her lips for nervousness. They are sticky. Almost dry. "I don't. I came to... apologize. and to request a boon of my king." Swallowing her pride is the hardest part of this. She can only pray his own pride is too great to doubt her.

His eyes narrow and flick toward the doorway, but she left Didymus and Ludo below. She is alone.

Because that is how it is done.

"What manner of boon?" _I can be generous,_ he once told her. She is counting on it.

"A kiss. I want... I want back what you took."

Jareth smiles. He has won. He leans closer to collect his prize. "And what is that?"

"My dreams." she whispers, and closes the distance between them, pressing sticky lips to his.

Jareth is the one to pull back from the kiss. He raises gloved fingers to his lips. Somewhere in the castle, she hears a clock chiming. One. Two.

"Your lips... taste funny."

Three. Four. "It must be the peach juice."

His face falls into tragic betrayal. How could she have done something this terrible to something this beautiful. "Sarah, no."

Five. Six. "The first taste entrances, but it requires a second taste to be free." Seven. Eight. Sarah's hate now is a conflicted thing, wrapped up in love, and grief, and confusion, and loss, and yearning.

Nine. Ten. The Goblin King sags on his throne, slips to the floor, still touching his lips. She crouches beside him, cradling him like a lover. "I've been trapped all these years, but no more. I'm free."

Eleven. Twelve. She takes his scepter from limp fingers. "The Labyrinth is mine again, and you are the dreamer."

Thirteen. The world shatters.

~~~

**_The Labyrinth_ **

_The Labyrinth is a maze of mirrors with only one secret: everything in it is a reflection of the beholder._

_There is no center; there is no King._

~~~  
Her hair is midnight dark where his was moon pale, the tangle of a briar patch to his dandelion puff. His coats and vests fit as if made for her, and perhaps they were. She is starting to forget where he ended and she began. The Labyrinth expands to edge everything else from her mind. She stands on the ramparts of her castle, the chatter of goblins filling her ears, the stamp of their feet skittering across her skin like caterpillar kisses. Every groove of the vista before her is carved into her skin. Every worm that inches along feels like the caress of a breeze. Every Firey that dances feels like a cobweb dragged across her cheek.

Her hand caresses a snowy owl perched on the rampart. Its feathers are soft as breath, soft as something else half-remembered. Something from a dream.

Impossible. She doesn't dream. She spins dreams into crystal realities. And just now, a dreamer is brushing close to her realm, heart open and filled with yearning, so wide it's like gazing into a maelstrom of pure wonder. She reflects that yearning back. That is all she can do, that is all the Labyrinth is: a mirror to reflect the dreamer's yearning.

"Say your right words," she whispers, and the snowy owl wings aloft, carrying her invitation to the dreamer to come explore her Labyrinth.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Recipient,
> 
> This fic could have been longer. Hell, this fic could have been an epic. I would have liked to have given Didymus, Ludo, and Hoggle more to do, and to have more little encounters with the Labyrinth, like you get in the movie. But it never would have been as good as KL_Morgan's "A Forfeit of Dreams," (everyone should go read that now) so maybe it's better that I didn't have time to epic-ify it.
> 
> I think you can probably tell it was _really hard_ for me to leave out the sex scene :) but I did try to make the rest of the fic as meta as possible for you. All the noodlings about what the Labyrinth might be are my own, and I don't know that I believe above half of them. I hope they work for you!
> 
> Many thanks to [redacted until reveals] for staying up with me while I transcribed this fic. That is what I get for writing by hand.


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